The Hollywood Reporter are reporting (from Hollywood, no less) that Jake Kasdan has signed on to direct Bad Teacher. The screenplay charted on the 2008 Blacklist and was penned by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, who also wrote the imminent Year One and are at work on the pending draft of Ghostbusters 3.

The Bad Teacher screenplay revolves around Elizabeth Halsey, a teacher with a cussin’ problem (er… no comment) who ends up in a bitter rivalry with her squeaky-clean colleague Amy Squirrel. Elizabeth is the sort of girl who wakes up at 3.40 in the afternoon, looks for breakfast in the fridge but finds only packets of ketchup, mustard and soy sauce so turns to her bong instead. I’m expecting that Rashida Jones will be front of the line for the role and that she’ll make hay with the truly hilarious bad behavior laid out on the page.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Scarlett Johansson would be a sought after actress for the Amy Squirrel role. Even if she doesn’t get the part you’ll see why I suggested her here when they announce who has.

The script is actually pretty darn funny, and I think I’ll definitely find it gratifying to see a school set film that focuses on the adults, and not the pupils.

I’m a great fan of Kasdan’s films and TV work. Perhaps Orange County underwhelmed me a little, but I found Mike White’s script to be the biggest issue there. His debut film was Zero Effect, a modern day blend of Sherlock Holmes and, after a fashion, Batman that starred Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller in the Holmes/Watson-come-Bruce/Dick roles and is criminally underknown. The greatest world’s greatest detective film that nobody much has ever seen.

Whether Bad Teacher will go into production before the Vegas magician picture Burt Dickenson, the last Kasdan project announced, isn’t yet clear but a nice one-two would be good.